Episode 59: Getting Started with a Skills-Based Talent Strategy (Interview with Karen Powell at IQVIA)
My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Karen Powell, Chief Talent and Learning Officer at IQVIA. Karen emphasises that talent marketplace goes far beyond being a technology solution, instead it is a far broader cultural shift that permeates across the organisation and enables a whole new way of thinking about talent. In our conversation, Karen and I discuss how HR and the business are working together to drive transformational change at IQVIA, with talent marketplace.
You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.
In our conversation, Karen and I discuss:
How to get started with implementing a skills-based talent strategy
Why a skills-based view of talent is critical for workforce planning
How talent marketplace helps companies understand productivity in a new and deeper way
Whether talent marketplace will mean that jobs won't exist anymore
This episode is a must listen for anyone interested or involved in HR transformation, internal mobility, workforce planning, people analytics and HR technology. So that is Business Leaders, Chief HR Officers and anyone in a people analytics, workforce planning, learning or HR Business Partner role.
Support for this podcast is brought to you by gloat. To learn more, visit https://www.gloat.com/.
Interview Transcript
David Green: Today, I am delighted to welcome Karen Powell, Chief Talent and Learning Officer at IQVIA, to The Digital HR Leaders podcast. Welcome to the show, Karen, it is great to have you on the show, thank you for coming.
Karen Powell: Thank you for having me, it is nice to be here.
David Green: Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to your background and your role at IQVIA?
Karen Powell: Sure, as you said, I head up Talent and Learning for IQVIA. So what that means is, basically everything that touches talent, everything that touches learning, except for Talent Acquisition. If you think about our company, we are a human data science company, across 80,000 people in 100 countries. I have been here two years and in talent and learning, probably for close to 20/25 years actually. I am based in New York and Australia prior to that, as you can hear by the accent. But when I think about talent and learning and what we are focused on right now, it is really on the future and future proofing of our organisation.
David Green: Great. I know we are going to talk about something that you guys are doing, that is really going to support that. We are talking a lot today about talent marketplace and talent marketplaces. Where are you currently in your talent marketplace journey? And maybe as an addition, what do you mean by talent marketplace at IQVIA?
Karen Powell: So I think about it as a bunch of puzzle pieces, I think that is probably the best way to talk about it. It is definitely a journey, it is not a one size fits all. And when I think about it, I think about a number of different pockets. I think we are at different maturity levels, depending on the pocket that sits within the journey. We are maturing when it comes to things like connecting our business strategy, our talent and skills and what we need to execute on our strategy. I think we are in evolving mode, of understanding the critical skills that we have and when I think about the proficiency levels that we need and how do I measure the current proficiency levels, I think that comes into it. We are evolving in the roadmaps that we are building, to close some of those critical skill gaps, so up-skilling, re-skilling. And then I think when people talk about the talent matching platforms, the mechanisms, I would say we are in our infancy, quite honestly. We are probably about four months into our technical journey and I think of it as really a minimal viable product. We are looking at, how do we have a mechanism that helps us facilitate that marketplace? The skills that we need with the skills that we have and how do we learn how to identify and mobilise those quickly?
David Green: And I suppose in your role, having responsibility across talent, minus talent acquisition, it enables you to go through that whole journey. Which I think is important, isn't it, if you are thinking about a talent marketplace because it connects a lot of traditional silos in HR together.
Karen Powell: It has to, right? And it is not just talent and learning or even TA, if you are not tied at the hip with the business, if you don't understand the business strategy, if you don't understand what you have inside your four walls and where the business is making money. You can't pull the levers that you need to pull.
David Green: I am actually really pleased that you said that you are starting with strategy because we speak to lots of people who just buy some technology and try and shoehorn it in. Ultimately it has to start with strategy, as you say. So I would be interested to hear how are the business and HR working together in IQVIA on the transformation? How have you, as a part of that, ensured senior stakeholder buy-in for the talent marketplace?
Karen Powell: This too is a journey, I would say. So when I started two years ago, when we looked at workforce planning, we were really in the, I am going to say, financial exercise, replacement planning exercise evolution.
And I think when we sat at the table with the business, with HR, with finance, we recognised the cost of having a really heavy buy strategy, when it came to talent. As we started to have a look at that, it wasn't sustainable. It is not sustainable, when we look at the future, especially because we have such highly skilled labour forces and they are expensive. So we had to sit at the table together and look at what it was from a skill perspective, we had looked at it from a business perspective obviously, business planning, but we had to have a look and break that business plan down by the skills that we need to execute on that strategy. I think the recognition was that we didn't really understand what we had, when it came to skills inside our four walls and we didn't know even how to find them quickly so it was always the same players that were being called upon. And so we needed to really have a look at all of these gaps that we were identifying and we went to market, we had a look at what there was in the market, but we had the business there with us. We brought people from our technology groups to the table, our finance groups to the table and our internal consulting groups to the table because we have never professed it to be an HR platform. We very much said it was an enterprise initiative and enterprise platform that is going to help us all as we evolve in to the future.
David Green: And it has to, it has to be connected to the business otherwise why do it?
Karen Powell: There is no point, right? We are all here because we have to make money for the business in one form or another and so that is the reality of it. It is like, how do we make sure that the organisation is evolving and being profitable? And then we, as employees, are contributing our skills and the things we bring to the table so that we each have a piece of it.
David Green: I think we both said it, talent marketplace is not just a technology solution. We have talked about the importance of connecting it with the business strategy and as you said, breaking down to the skills that you need and you want to develop. It is actually a far broader cultural shift that permeates across the organisation. I know you have talked about that before, can you expand on that a little bit?
Karen Powell: Look, it is a mechanism. It is a platform. It is one piece of the puzzle and I think if people think it is a one-shot deal, that is pretty delusional to be quite honest because you really have to be in it for the long haul.
And when I think about it, we have got to shift the whole culture. We have 80,000 people and when I look at what we need to do, we need to shift our organisation to stop thinking about like for like replacement. We have got to stop the organisation thinking about purely job descriptions and instead how do we break up the job descriptions, or the jobs that need to be done, into the skills that we need to do those things. We need to create that mindset on even career development about growth and experiences versus upward movement and that we are always energising our people. We need to change even our processes and moving from traditional performance management. Here at IQVIA, we are trying to make it more than just a once a year activity.
We want to make sure it is around business goals and personal goals, but really making sure that it is about ongoing contributions and changes in priorities in the market and in the business, so that people actually recognise how they are impacting our business outcomes, regardless of the seats that they sit in and what they bring to the table.
So I think that all of those pieces are incredibly important in shifting the organisation, so they are along for the ride, but I also think with Covid obviously we have moved to a more hybrid environment and have to help people recognise we are never going back to where we were. So how do we help people recognise what that means for the future and how do we support Leaders to support their teams and coach their talent through all of this.
So there is a lot that happens on the people side and obviously there is a lot that happens on the technical side.
David Green: I would be interested to just explore that in two ways. Firstly, how do you affect that change management? So how do you affect that change management with the business and what are a couple of the things that you are doing? And then if you think about new ways of working, but also actually thinking a little bit differently anyway, looking at talent marketplace and the associated activities around that.
Karen Powell: Yeah. I mean, there are a number of things that we are doing as an organisation that are not even related to the actual platform, the mechanism. It really is starting with what are the actions that we need to take as an organisation to future proof ourselves. So that saying “doing more with less” I think is a bit of a backward saying, we should be doing more with less human bodies and doing it more with technology. And so how do we redeploy and get people to recognise that the rote type of actions that we are doing on a day to day basis, how do we shift that so it is more high value work. But if you don't link that high value work to that overall enterprise strategy and then obviously the strategy within your business or the strategy that's on your desk, you can't link the two. Then you don't really know why you are coming to work other than to make widgets.
So the idea for our whole organisation is, we have a tagline that talks about Bolder, Smarter, Leaner, so what do those mean? And what do those mean for you and your team? So we have a very big communication push that is going across the organisation and it is all about the people in our organisation. How we all affect change and how we are working with our clients, whether internal or external it doesn't matter, but how we inform, affect and impact all of that. I think people are starting to realise it doesn't matter if you work in HR or you work in accounts payable or finance or if you are client facing, we all have a piece of the puzzle and if we don't all pull our weight I think that is important.
The other part that I would say as part of our change management, so that is a whole communication plan and helping people connect the dots. But I also think when we start to talk to people about what they like to do for a living and what energises them, what excites them, what their skills are, what their strengths are when they realise they can do more of those things and less of the soul sucking things, people also start to get more engaged. We have got a whole plan around our employee engagement and the levers that affect employee engagement. Again, these are all working groups that we have where we all sit at the table with the business and we work together with the business.
I think the second part of your question was about HR?
David Green: Yeah. I suppose what you have just summarised that you are helping to do through change and communication and then technology to support that, is helping people own their own careers within the organisation and develop as they want to develop. Then there is a benefit that supports the business as well.
Karen Powell: Of course and I think that that's the thing we can say often, that people have to take responsibility for their own career, but we also have to give them all the tools and the support to get there.
David Green: And then the second part was HR. What does it mean for HR? As I guess it is a new way of working. How do you affect that change within HR?
Karen Powell: I think it is similar. HR needs to understand that they are not there to be a pair of hands for the business and I think for many years we have been talking about HR being more strategic and you see it every day. When we are talking about the business and the skills for the future for the business, we have to put some effort into HR. We have to be able to say to HR, the skills that you are going to need for the future, include the same things as what we are professing for the business and developing in the business. So whether it is from digital technology experiences right through to making sure that you are curious and giving you opportunities to be curious, to move into and out of projects that again, energise you and tap into your skills.
So I think there is a lot of work we are doing here to up-skill our HR population in line with our business.
David Green: And typically again, last question on this, what are the types of skills that HR is having to learn? I presume it is stuff around data capability, digital, those sorts of things.
Karen Powell: Well, I think one of the biggest things because we all know data drives everything. I think if people can't tell a story with the data, that is probably top of our list. I think when we talk about that, it is not just telling the story, but it is being able to pull out the insights. That is a skill in itself and it is not an easy one. People aren't just running reports, what does it mean and how do you link it to other data which is actually going to impact the business? So I think that one is a big one.
I also think, people call it “Executive presence” I am not sure if that is a great description. I think it is presence in the business, or having the confidence to say no and to challenge, to have more of that consulting mindset and the active listening and digging deeper because the business doesn’t have all the answers. HR doesn’t have all the answers, how do we bounce it together and get to the right place? And so I think that is another piece that I think is a really big piece.
Then HR have a lot on their shoulders and it is impossible for them to know everything that is in the four walls of an organisation. Whether it is from benefits to each of the COE’s and so it is something we are really focused on this year, is helping them cut through the noise and find what is it that the COE’s bring to the table? When can you bring them in to help support you? Because it is impossible for them to have all the answers, as I said, so I think it is those type of things.
Also understanding the business acumen, yes revenues may be great but margins may be short. So how do you figure out your connections to the business and the impact in the market?
David Green: It is interesting, it is a familiar story that I hear from lots of your peers actually.
So last time we spoke, you used a great analogy that “turning on talent marketplace is like turning up a dimmer, not flicking on a light switch” which I really like. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about that?
Karen Powell: I can. You know, it is funny when I hear you say that because I think back to when I was younger, I always thought crossing things off the list was success, but when I looked behind me, I hadn't actually brought everyone along for the ride. I just bought a small group of people along for the ride. And when I think about turning the dimmer up, I think that is more what success really is today because we are a large organisation, there is no way that you can bring people along for the ride overnight. So you slowly bring people to the table and you evolve and evolve and evolve and people are at different stages of readiness. So you have to be able to bring them when they are ready and when you look behind you, all of a sudden, then everybody is there with you when you get to your light switch actually being on. So you have actually really instilled a change within the organisation, within behaviours, within the culture. I think talent marketplace is very much the dimmer because it is not a plug and play, there is a lot that goes into it and it does take many years on the journey to get it right. Not even right actually because it is never going to stay stagnant, it is always going to be evolving.
David Green: Maybe at a more tactical level now. How would you encourage organisations to think about getting started with talent marketplace?
So you have been on the journey for a couple of years and I am sure you have learnt some lessons and reflections on that now, but where would you encourage people to start?
Karen Powell: Yeah, at the beginning I talked about the puzzle pieces and there are a lot of puzzle pieces that are part of the whole journey. I think it starts, obviously with data without a doubt that, first and foremost it is qualitative and quantitative. I will say, I think there are a lot of questions that people need to ask before they go down the route of actually engaging a platform. What is your business strategy? What is it going to take to deliver on that strategy? And I said earlier, people are really good at putting the business plan together but you need to break that down and figure out what are the skills that you are going to need to do that. I think the question, do you even know what skills you have? And if you do know, do you know what level of proficiency you have? If you look at where those skills are in your organisation, can you deploy them quickly if you need to? I think, the gap between that information is going to help you identify where you may need to look at different platforms or different mechanisms. Even when you think about mindset, is your organisation ready to move from replacement planning to a more agile workforce or strategic workforce planning? I think the mindset is a big deal for people to shift. I also think you need to know what the market looks like when it comes to skills, do you know the skills you want and are they in short supply in your organisation or in the market? Can they easily be built or do you need to go buy them? And where do you put your dollars that you have? Is it in the buy strategy or the build strategy? And so I think, a lot of people say “We don't have these formal mechanisms yet. We don't have workforce planning or strategic planning.” But I think start small. We all do business operating reviews on a monthly, quarterly, yearly basis, build it into that conversation because it is going to effect people's profitability.
Build it into succession planning discussions. We all do action planning whether we see bad turnover data or we see our survey data, build these kinds of questions into your action planning.
When you look at internal and external data, there is a lot available that costs very little and I think people need to learn how to use their human resource systems, whether it is Workday or something else. Recruiting systems and platforms, CRM’s, all of these are inside most people's four walls.
Then when you look at externally, obviously there are things like LinkedIn and TalentNeuron, that are all reasonably available.
So I think there are a lot of questions that people need to ask and I think to understand what it is that they are trying to fill, what need they are trying to fill before they go down the role of engaging a platform. As I said, you can't just plug it in and it goes.
We have been on this journey in one form or another for a couple of years and when I look at the platform itself, we are starting really small because it is such a big shift and we are committed. We think it is worth it and we do know that we are in it for the long haul.
David Green: In terms of starting small, does that sometimes mean potentially starting in a small business unit or a country within the organisation, learning and iterating and building communication out further? Is that an approach that you have either tried or think would be a sensible one?
Karen Powell: Yes it is and that is exactly where we are. We have identified critical jobs and critical skills within our organisation. We have taken one of those critical job families, we actually have multiple thousands of people in this job family, however we are starting literally with small pockets of people that we are inviting in to fill out profiles. Then we are asking another pocket of people to fill out or to put opportunities into the marketplace. Then we are inviting people in to see the matching. So we are giving people roles and responsibilities as we're slowly iterating, I use the word minimum viable product, it is a fancy minimal viable product admittedly, but with the business and the people we are bringing in, in small groups, they are aware that they are there to help us evolve it. So they are giving us feedback and they are sharing how they would use it with their teams.
Even when we think about what is going into the system, we have been really cautious about how we are putting parameters around some of the opportunities and we are putting parameters around the framing and the communication around the invitations into it. So yes, it can't be all or nothing otherwise it would fail.
David Green: I am just interested, what are the types of opportunities that you have got in the marketplace? Is it like permanent roles, is it project-based stuff or is it a bit of both?
Karen Powell: Right now with starting with small projects. What I mean by small is we are putting parameters up so we are only allowing people to sign up for five hours a week. Why we are doing that is obviously we want to control it because we don't want people not doing their day job or their Managers not being supportive. So we are trying to do it whether it is on top of your day job or you will take five hours a week out of your day job, it is really about how do we get people testing the waters, putting their toes in to see if people are actually going to A] put in decent opportunities for people, but also then the skills that other people are bringing to the table, making sure that they are bringing impactful skills to add value to the project. So as we start evolving that and find out what success looks like, we will evolve and open up that five hours. We have a lot of billable resources, so we have to balance with what is billable to clients, which this obviously isn’t, but what is billable to us as an organisation, as part of development. So we have to look at all of that. Once we get through those hurdles, we will start looking at full-time jobs. So we are starting on the back end, already looking at what it is going to take to do that.
The other part is mentoring. We are doing a small pilot, a couple of hundred people, where we want to do the matching through mentoring and see what the impact is because there are some restrictions on whether you can ring fence groups and whether you should. So we are going through all of that philosophical pieces of that now.
So yes they are the areas right now, the small projects and mentoring and then evolving to full-time projects.
David Green: Anyone listening here, you can see that it supports you with closing gaps that you have got which might be temporary or they might be quite small, just a few hours a week or something, but that helps learning, helps people utilise some of the skills that they have got that they might not be using in their main role. But actually to use those skills in other roles helps learning and development and then the whole thing around experience, it provides a bit of variety and then there is that collaboration as well. There are so many benefits in there that I can think of and those were just the ones off the top of my head.
Karen Powell: It is totally true. And you think about we can’t afford, I am saying we as IQVIA by the way, we can't afford to replace really highly expensive, highly technical skill-sets for like for like replacement. So the question becomes, do we need to? Some areas, of course we are going to need to, but in some areas we don't, we just need that skill for a period of time. So how do we balance the two needs and how do we make sure that one headcount maybe can be used in three different projects throughout a year? That it is a value add for all of us, for the employee and for the organisation. So it sounds like a no brainer, but it is not easy to facilitate this.
David Green: No, no, but yeah you can see where you could go with this. It is a much more flexible way of workforce planning and of running an organisation, frankly. I would like to dig in a little bit more to the skills-based view. We have talked about that a little bit here, why do you think the skills based view of talent is so critical for workforce planning today?
Karen Powell: I think it comes back to what I just said about we are in need of skills that are in high demand and from an IQVIA perspective, we have got medical, we have got data scientists, technology skills and so when I look at all of those skills, it comes down to the dollars and cents. As an organisation, if we want to continue to be profitable, if we want to partner with our clients to make sure that we are being cost effective and cost efficient, all of these things are really important to be able to be agile. I think as an organisation, we have to look at the different ways to do that and as I said, some jobs will always be jobs, some will need to be more agile and it also comes down to the people. Some people want to work in a job and be very clear about what they are doing and other people, their success is because they are always being challenged by new projects. So it is a win-win when it comes down to how an organisation effectively leverages its talent and skills and it comes down to, what is going to engage employees in the right way. Obviously it all comes out to profitability and production and impact and all of those types of things.
David Green: Yes and it leads quite nicely to the next question really and potentially helps you understand productivity in a new way.
Karen Powell: Without a doubt and I think within organisations, it is not just about productivity of the organisation, it is productivity of the people. It is a new way of working. We have moved from caring about face time or the hours in the office and we are measuring people less on those types of things and really looking at what is their impact? What are they bringing to the table? What are they producing for clients? And if we are producing for clients in a more effective, more efficient, more engaged way, prices come down. Clients are going to engage, we are not going to have the overhead. So I think it is part of our value proposition as an organisation that we are more efficient, we can get to market quicker, we can produce quicker and it is part of the value proposition for employees that we can leverage their strengths. I always talk about wanting to do things that don't suck the life out of me and that is what engages me. So I think people think more in that respect than it just being productivity of the amount of hours you spent in front of a computer or in an office. So I think the whole look at productivity is changing
David Green: A lot of times when people talk about productivity, it is very much thinking about the company perspective, I like the way that you are thinking about it from an employee perspective as well.
And I guess that is part of the overall value proposition of talent marketplace to the employee as well.
We have talked about some of these but would be great for you to recap that or summarise some of the areas where you believe that this is really creating a value proposition for employees?
Karen Powell: I think it comes down to, we all bring strengths to the table, we will never be good at everything. Within our jobs, we have parts of our job that energise us and engage us and help us produce dramatically fast or great quality. And then we have times where we are doing things that we just don't want to do and quite frankly, we are not good at, so why not spend our time or make a choice on whether we want to spend our time doing things that are leveraging our strengths. By doing that, we are engaged, we are producing more, we are producing quicker, we producing better quality, we are continuously engaged. So it comes back to the strategy of talent for building versus buying of talent, we are always going to have to buy some, that is never going to go away. But think about internally by having a look at the skills that we need, the skills that we can develop internally, it allows for people to have multiple opportunities and movement, if that is what they want to do and if that is where the business wants to support it. Again, the mechanism isn't going to be the panacea of everything, but it is something that will help facilitate the match. But you do that in combination with your workforce planning or strategic planning, with your training and development, with the shift in the agile culture of an organisation and it becomes where employees want to stay, they are going to want to stay at the organisation. They are going to want to stay engaged and produce and people are going to want to come and work at your organisation. So I think it is a win-win from every aspect of people coming into the organisation, people staying in the organisation and then obviously the flow on effect is productivity, which is for the organisations win.
David Green: As you are in the early stages, well not the early early stages but you are still not fully rolled out across the organisation, how will you measure success or how are you measuring success?
Karen Powell: We have lots of ideas but I think it started right at the beginning when we looked to finance some of this particular mechanism, the platform, that helps match. We had a look at the data of our turnover, for example and we looked at what was the impact of reducing that turnover of these very highly expensive skills. The reality was, if we could decrease that turnover by a small margin, that was huge on our bottom line. If you can move people internally and shift the mindset that you can have multiple careers in our four walls, if you do then have to backfill with an external, it is still cheaper internally to do the movement because we know it is hard to come into an organisation and navigate huge organisations.
So when we look at all of these things, measurement of success is A] that we retain the talent that we need B] that our cost to market, time to market, when it comes to our products and that things that we deliver are more efficient and more impactful. So it is looking at that and we have started linking things like our training, our movement, our data, to our talent attractors and talent detractors in the organisation and linking that to impact on revenue. So we are starting to look at all of those types of things. It is not just turnover data that in itself is just one data point, so there is a lot going into it. We are exploring a lot of different areas for success, but I think step one is that we want engagement in the platform. We want people to recognise when they are hiring, that it isn't like for like and they can look at it differently. Once we get the opportunities into the system, we want people to actually be matched and take up the opportunities. So all of these types of things, but we are also then building the business impact and the revenue impact measures so that we can start looking at those, when we do have mass amounts of people within the platform.
David Green: What are the next steps that you are looking at in terms of evolution? I would be interested to see where you think this will go next.
Karen Powell: Ask me in six months time. We have invited people for our stage one to participate in the platform. We are starting to get a slow uptick, but we also know people are competitive and so as people start to hear about it, people will start to want to be part of it. So next step is really for us to engage the pilot populations, we have a timeline where we plan to bring in hundreds of people on a bi-weekly type basis, into the platform. So as we start to evolve that, we will see if we are on track or we are being overly ambitious, is probably the word.
So we are evolving and we are doing that with this one business group, but then it is also shifting a mindset in the organisation to let people know it is coming. They can start to get excited about it and then slowly as we start getting more and more interest, we will start adding more and more people into the platform.
We are still obviously looking at the critical skills and data that can come out of matching platforms is really important too, because I think that data helps us understand exactly what the demand and the supply is, within our four walls. Again, people talk about, we need X and we have Y, but until you actually see people saying, I need it right now, so part of that will also then help us in the next evolution. So I think all of these areas are happening in parallel, but we are hoping by the middle of this year that we will have about 10,000 people in our platform. We hope we will be, again that may be overly ambitious, but that we are on that trajectory at the moment. So that is where we are at.
David Green: Great and I suppose effectively to get those extra people in is a lot about the storytelling that you were telling earlier and giving the insights and communicating what the benefits are both to the organisation and to the employees as well.
It sounds like there is a lot of people analytics underpinning this.
Karen Powell: Oh, without a doubt. Look, we are an analytics company and human data science. It proves the point, you can measure it if you are using data, you can get finance to buy into it, you can get the business to buy into it if you are using data. Without the data, it’s all just fluff.
David Green: I might quote you on that “without the data, it’s all just fluff” that's fantastic. I love the way that you were already thinking about the measures of success and tying that into finance, because certainly in the work that we do, a lot of people say, have you got a tip around how you measure the impact of analytics? Work with finance at the outset, before you do any work, agree howyou are going to measure success. Whether that is in financial terms or in other terms. So really, really good. That leads on nicely to the question that we are asking everyone on this series actually, I love this question. Will talent marketplaces mean that jobs don't exist anymore? Wow, I will leave that one to you to answer.
Karen Powell: Thanks very much. Look, I think it is a good question to continue to ask ourselves, but if I am being honest, I don't think jobs are going away anytime soon. I think this is an opportunity for organisations to have a look at their job architecture and have a hybrid model like everything else that we are moving into hybrid models for. I think we will need some constants in jobs or in organisations, depending on what the organisation does for a living. But I do think that we are going to move more to the skills, the agile, less job for job replacement, I think we can't afford not to. I think with the evolution of technology, of data, there is no need to. I think when you look at what organisations need to make choices around and what employees need to make choices around, we both have choice now and I think there is more choice and more people have choice.
So organisations are going to have to play in the sandbox and I think employees are going to have to recognise that they are going to have to continue to up-skill themselves all the time.
I do think there will be a hybrid model, but I do think that the skills side of things will probably win out.
It might be in my work time or it might be after I have retired but I do think the skills are going to take top priority.
David Green: I suppose if you are a data scientists working in HR, why can't you spend 10 hours a week being a data scientist working in marketing? That helps the business, you might actually find that there is projects that you can combine together that benefit both parts of the organisation and actually you are enhancing your skills and you are bringing two parts of the business together. So yeah, I can definitely see it coming and although you might say I am a data scientist, I don't have a specific job as such. So, yeah, very interesting.
Karen, before I ask you for how people can stay in touch, is there any question that I haven't asked you today around the work you are doing, that you wish I had asked you?
Karen Powell: I think we talked about everything, but I think the one thing that I would have people take away is the fact that it really is a long journey and think of my light dimmer, it is going to take a long time to bring everyone along for the ride. It is important, it is not going away. I think people have to look at it as a long journey that is always evolving. So I would just leave people with that, it is a big commitment, but it is definitely worth the commitment.
David Green: Well, Karen, it has been great to catch up with you. Thank you for being a guest on The Digital HR Leaders podcast. How can people stay in touch with you?
Karen Powell: So you can find me on LinkedIn, that is probably the easiest way to get in touch with me. My inbox at IQVIA is probably jam packed. It has been nice to be here, so thank you for having me.
David Green: Karen, thank you very much. Take care for the rest of the day.